Mars rovers re-establish communications with NASA

Both NASA rovers on Mars are emerging from a month-long communications hiatus this week, and the older one, Opportunity, is showing some signs of creakiness.

Opportunity went into standby mode last week, shutting itself down during a cosmic alignment called solar conjunction, when the the sun is between Earth and Mars. Communications are kept to a minimum during that time to ensure commands sent to the rovers aren't corrupted by the sun.

"Our current suspicion is that Opportunity rebooted its flight software, possibly while the cameras on the mast were imaging the sun," Opportunity project manager John Callas said in a statement.

Mission controllers sent new commands Monday for the 8-year-old rover to resume operations.

Curiosity, the rover that arrived on Mars last year to search for ancient signs of life, is expected to reconnect with JPL on Wednesday.

Mission controllers have gotten steady status updates from Curiosity throughout solar conjunction, JPL spokesman Guy Webster said, because one-way messages sent from Mars back to Earth aren't as likely to cause an equipment malfunction.

Those messages were relayed by one of the satellites, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

During the conjunction, Curiosity continued to collect scientific data that doesn't require much oversight, such as radiation and weather readings.

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Scientists will have a chance to resume taking drilling samples now that Curiosity will be fully operational on Wednesday,

Last month, JPL announced that the first drill samples showed an ancient watery environment that was stable enough to support life, following the discovery last year that the rover had landed in an area that had once been a flowing river.

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